The Most Annoying FanFiction Mistakes
by EmmaSkies
Summary: Please read this and make good use of it.  I know you probably think your writing is fine, but SOMEONE out there is making all these annoying mistakes and one may have slipped into your story even if you have a beta.  Just a quick peek is all it takes.


**Annoying mistakes to avoid making in your stories!**

**A quick note before you read**: I'm…how should I put this…very _opinionated_ about things. In real life I keep most of my opinions about things to myself, but here it's just too easy to let loose, so that's what I'm doing. In saying this I'm trying to warn you that if you're easily upset or offended I apologize in advance. I know that I'm going to make some people angry because I do call people stupid in this little "guide." I say it only when I feel it's warranted, but I do say it. If you still want to read this, I hope you learn something. Enjoy.

P.S. - This was a much more organized list full of indentions and bullets before FanFiction got a hold of it and ruined all my formatting.

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><p><strong>Please read this as a checklist and make sure your storychapter doesn't contain these errors before you post:**

- Learn how to spell the word **definitely**! It's not definately, or definantly, and it's certainly not defiantly. Please, it's a simple word and an easy fix.

**- Homophones! **Learn them! (homo = same, phone = sound) I never realized that this wasn't common knowledge until I began reading FanFiction, so I'll go over it now.

- "**You're**" is a contraction of the words "you" and "are." If you're not sure if you've used it correctly read the sentence back, but this time replace the word "you're" with the words "you are." If it fits, you're probably right.

- Use "**your**" when you want to talk about something that belongs to someone (i.e. "your house" or "your auburn hair").

- The word "**there**" refers to a physical place (i.e. "she placed it there" or "I watched him walk over there")

- "**They're**" is a contraction of the words "they" and "are." Not sure if you've used the word correctly? Do the same thing you did to check the word "you're."

- The most commonly misused or overlooked one is "their." "**their**" – like "your" – is used to show possession; but, in this case, by more than one individual (i.e. "their eyes" or "their intelligence").

- "**It's**" is a contraction of the words "it" and "is."

- "**Its**" is possessive. Are you sensing a pattern?

- Other often misused homophones include:

**- Bear/bare** (bear = an animal, bare = naked)

**- Rapped/wrapped/rapt** (rapped = hit or tapped, wrapped = covered or bundled, rapt = as in "rapt attention")

**- Reek/wreak** (reek = as in "smell", wreak = as in "to wreak havoc")

**- Horse/hoarse** (horse = an animal, hoarse = as in "a hoarse voice")

**- Waste/Waist **(Waste = garbage, Waist = above your hips and below your ribcage)

- Know how to spell the **names of your characters**. The name I've seen misspelled most often is **Emmett**. Remember, 2 M's and 2 T's. Other than Emmett most names are usually spelled right, although I have seen **Rosalie** spelled Rosealie.

- Your story should have **conflict**! Every story has an end, (although some writers seem to think they can avoid that and just keep putting up chapters. Once you hit 70, it's time to think about stopping) and there should always be something that's taking the reader to the end of the story. I'm not sure if that made any sense, so I'll try to explain myself a bit better. There needs to be a reason for readers to read your story. If they get 15 chapters in and there's no conflict, nothing to look forward to or guess about, there's no reason to keep reading. Basically what I'm trying to say is that there needs to be a **plot**. A defined beginning, middle, and end. Here's a basic template:

**- Beginning**: Introduce the characters and the setting. Give a backstory and a history of the people.

**- Middle**: introduce the conflict. What is your story all about?

**- End**: Climax. The characters overcome the conflict (or, for a not-so-happy ending, the conflict overcomes your characters) and the story ends.

- A quick word about **Author's Notes**. To be blunt, your readers don't care about you or your life. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is. **not a social networking site**; people don't get an account to make friends; they get an account to read and write. If someone happens to PM you, or vice-versa, and you strike up a conversation and become friends, that's fine, but when readers see that notification of a new chapter they're thought isn't _"Oh I wonder what [author name] has been up to! I really do hope he/she prattles on about what's been going on in his/her life!" _and as such you're Author's Note shouldn't be longer than **a few lines and a disclaimer**. There's nothing more annoying than looking at the e-mail for a new chapter, getting excited that it says the update is three-thousand words, and finding out that seventy-five percent of those three-thousand words is an Author's Note. Here are some examples of **good Author's Notes**:

- "_Here's another chapter for you guys, I hope you like it. Let me know what you think."_

- "_Sorry this chapter is so late, [insert SHORT explanation here]."_

- Or my personal favorite:

- "_."_

- I actually found this next one by accident a while ago (before I decided to write this) and loved it, so I've added it to the list verbatim:

_- The ever-present __**Mary Sue**__. It seems like everyone reading or writing fanfic makes fun of the Mary Sue phenomenon, and yet people keep on writing it. What is Mary Sue? It's a generic term for a story where the author invents an original character who is obviously a wishful-thinking stand-in for the author herself. The Mary Sue character is beautiful, smart, competent, and irresistibly sexy. Invariably, she ends up saving the planet (or whatever) and the main series character (Picard, Mulder, Buffy, Xena, etc.) falls madly in love with her, upon which they have pages and pages of soulful, steamy sex. __**Please avoid Mary Sue-ism at all costs**__. It's almost never a good thing. (Note that the feminine pronoun is used in the previous paragraph because Mary Sues are almost always female. Not always, but definitely the vast majority of the time.) _

- Be consistent in the **tense** you use. If your story is written in past tense, Bella should never _wake up_; she should always have _woken up._ Switching between past, present, and future tense for no apparent reason is annoying and quite frankly it makes you look stupid.

- The same goes for **point-of-view**. If you're writing in first-person it should always be _I, me, my, etc._ If you're in third-person it should all be pronouns and names. (If you don't know what a pronoun is, you probably shouldn't be writing on this site.)

- One of the most annoying things I've ever seen on FanFiction is an Author's Note that goes like this: _"Hey, so it's like 2 in the morning and I've been up for the last 27 hours, so this may not make any sense, but here it is anyway."_ Are you kidding me? **There is such a thing as a "save" button, use it!** It's not necessary that you post your incomprehensible drivel right then and there. Trust me, your readers would rather get the chapter a few hours, or even a day later, than have to translate and guess just to figure out what's happening. So you either don't care that you're about to look like an idiot or the whole statement is a lie and you're too lazy to proofread so you just throw that out there as an excuse as to why your chapter is going to look like it was written by a sixth grader.

- "**Then**" and "**than**." I'm not sure I can accurately express how frustrated I get when I see people mix these two words up. "Then" is a transitional word (i.e. I did this, and then I did that). "Than" has many uses and I'm not sure I could eloquently define them, so I'll just list a few examples: "I would rather do this than that," "I'm older than her," "That day was hotter than the weatherman had predicted," etc.

- There is one easy way to tell if a writer truly proofreads their work or if they just hit spellcheck and post it, you just have to look at the words. That seems like an odd statement, I know, since you're reading and therefore doing nothing _but_ looking at words, but look at the words themselves. If someone writes something like "I could see my own breathe," you know that they're either stupid or they didn't proofread. Remember people, **spellcheck is not** **magic!** It can't read your mind and it has no idea what you're writing, it only looks at the individual words; so you have to read back what you wrote to make sure it all makes sense. Here are some common mistakes of this nature (they're all really stupid and anyone can recognize and fix them, so I'm not writing explanations. Google them if you need to.):

_**- Breathe/Breath**_

_**- Lose/Loose**_

_**- Should have/Should of**_

_**- Definitely/Defiantly**_

_**- Quite/Quiet**_

- There are many more, but I'm sure you all get the idea.

- Good vs Evil! Just kidding, this one is "**Good**" vs "**Well**". I swear to god, if I get a review on this and someone says they write _good_, I'm going to…well I'm not going to do anything, but it's going to piss me off. No one writes _good, _and if they think they do they're an idiot. I'm not saying this because I'm high and mighty and no one can live up to my amazing writing (note the sarcasm). No, I'm saying this because it's a known fact that people who say they write _good_ are terrible writers. People who say they write _well_, on the other hand, are probably right. Do you all get my point?

**- Missing words or letters**. I understand that sometimes our brains move faster than our fingers, believe me I do; but that doesn't excuse missing words or letters. You should always go back over your finished product at least twice if not more.

- This one isn't a rule, it's just something that I've noticed neatens up a person's writing. As far as numbers go, there's really no set rule on **when to use actual numbers (1, 2, 3, etc.) versus when to write numbers (one, two, three, etc.)**, so I'll tell you what my eighth grade Hnrs. English teacher Mr. French told me. If a number is less than **three words** –yes, words, not numbers – long, then you write it out. Basically one through one hundred should be written out along with two hundred, three hundred, one thousand, eight million, etc. Any number longer than three words can be shown by using the actual number (i.e. 182; 679; 8,245,687,342; etc.).

- Learn what the word **irony** really means. Please, this is for everyday conversation as well as writing. It's _**not**_ ironic that Jacob and Edward are in love with the same girl; however, it _**is**_ ironic that I seem to have a problem placing commas in the correct places _and _I'm writing a guide on how to write correctly. (Seriously though, commas and I don't get along so if you see any errors in this please point them out.)

So there's my list of FanFiction pet peeves. I'm sure that as I read more stories I'll see more things that piss me off, but I'll just add to this and make more people mad. I realize that this is going to come off as mean and rude to some people, but this is something people are putting on the internet, something that people all over the world can see. Do you really want to look like an idiot to the whole world? I'm just saying.

**Bring on the angry reviews.**


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